Thursday, November 24, 2011

Back To The Classics Book Challenge 2012

I was surfing twitter and the interwebs earlier this week and came across a new blog: Sarah Reads Too Much. She was proposing a challenge to read a number of classics within certain catagories during 2012.

As I wrote the other day, I read a lot of books during 2011 and was looking for something a bit different in 2012 as a challenge. There are a number of classics, that I want to read, some that I have already, the books sitting on my shelves and have never gotten around to reading, others that I'll have to get hold of a copy, but again ones that I've always wanted to read.

Anyway here are the categories:

Any 19th Century Classic

Any 20th Century Classic

Reread a classic of your choice

A Classic Play

Classic Mystery/Horror/Crime Fiction

Classic Romance

Read a Classic that has been translated from its original language to your language - To clarify, if your native language is NOT English, you may read any classic originally written in English that has been translated into your native language.

Classic Award Winner - To clarify, the book should be a classic which has won any established literary award.

Read a Classic set in a Country that you (realistically speaking) will not visit during your lifetime - To Clarify, this does not have to be a country that you hope to visit either. Countries that no longer exist or have never existed count.

And here are my provisional choices (I might change some as I think more on this, but these are my gut reactions based on books that I've always wanted to read, or have on my shelves and have never gotten around to reading, and are all regarded in one way or another as classics):

Any 19th Century Classic:

Walden - Henry David Thoreau

Any 20th Century Classic

Watership Down - Richard Adams

Reread a classic of your choice

The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling or The Hobbit J R R Tolkien

A Classic Play

The Seagull - Anton Chekhov

Classic Mystery/Horror/Crime Fiction

At The Mountains of Madness - H P Lovecraft

Classic Romance

Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare

Classic translation

Around the World In Eighty Days - Jules Verne

Classic Award Winner

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemmingway (Pulitzer 1953)

Read a Classic set in a Country that you (realistically speaking) will not visit during your lifetime

The Island of Dr Moreau - H G Wells (not sure if this counts as a country that has "never existed", so might have to rethink this one).